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praoFiel iFFmon, 



Rev. ARTHUR MITCHELL, D. D. 



JAMES A, GARFIELD, 



R 

MEMORIAL SERMON 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 



CLEVELAND, D,, 



REV, ARTHUR MITCHELL, L, 13,, 



Sunday, September 25, 1BB1, 



CLEVELAND, O.: 
6 CO., PRINTERS, 16 & 18 FRANKFORT 8T. 



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Exchange 

We8 t. Res. Hist- Soc. 

1915 



Cleveland, O., September 26, 1881 

REV. ARTHUR MITCHELL, D. D. 

Dear Sir : 

The undersigned, impressed with the force and 
the beauty of your delineation of the life and character of our lamented 
Garfield, at the morning service in the First Presbyterian Church, Sun- 
day, September 25, and earnestly desiring that a tribute to his goodness, 
and his greatness so just and truthful should be more widely extended 
through its publication, respectfully request a copy of the sermon for 
this purpose. 

George H. Ely. James P. Clark. 

R. F. Smith. George H. Burt. 

Amasa Stone E. C Higbbe. 

Peter Hitchcock. John A. Poote. 

G. E. Herrick. George Mygatt. 

Samdel Williamson. R. C Parsons. 

Henry N. Raymond. 



Cleveland, O., September 27, 1881. 
GEORGE H. ELY, Esq, 

Dear Sir: 

I very gladly accede to the request contained 
in the note signed by yourself and many other friends. It is a source 
of great satisfaction to me to know that my heart-felt words respecting 
President Garfield, on the sad occasion to which you refer, seemed to 
you, and to his other friends whose names accompany your own, only 
just. If this is the estimate of his character which you also, his life- 
long friends and neighbors, hold, then with new and warmer admira- 
tion my heart goes out towards that wonderful and beloved man. 
Yours, in the common grief, 

ARTHUR MITCHELL. 



MEMORIAL SERMON 



"I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the 
golden wedge of Ophir. — Is. xiii : 12. 

We share, my friends, to-day the greatest grief 
that America has ever known. It is no exaggera- 
tion to say that no one stroke of Providence has 
ever spread throughout all our land such poignant 
and universal pain, or has been so widely felt as a 
shock and a sorrow in every portion of the earth. 

I am not using words without care. I do not for- 
get those dreadful days of April, sixteen years ago, 
when the slow procession passed from state to state, 
bearing the remains of the beloved Lincoln to the 
tomb. But there was one whole section of our land, 
it will be remembered, which had never acknowl- 
edged him as their ruler, and had never viewed 
him, alas ! except as their foe. Innumerable noble 
hearts there disowned the crime that laid him low ; 
but although they abhorred the assassin's crime, 
around his victim their sentiments of confidence 



6 

and admiration and loyalty had never been gath- 
ered. 

I do not forget the horror which smote the nation 
when Hamilton fell, the universal pall of sorrow of 
which our fathers tell us, — the metropolis of the 
country draped in black, the vast and solemn cor- 
tege which, amidst weeping throngs, followed Hamil- 
ton through its chief avenue to the grave. 

And as one heart the hearts of Americans mourned 
for Washington. There were friends of liberty who 
wept with them in every part of the world. But 
liberty itself had not then so many friends on earth 
as now. By one great nation Washington was held 
to have drawn a rebel sword. And against anoth- 
er, our earlier ally, he had unsheathed it and stood 
prepared for war, And even by the countrymen 
of Washington it could not be forgotten that he 
had nearly fulfilled the allotted years of man. His 
work was done. His years of war had won for his 
country the full liberty she sought. His eight glor- 
ious years of Presidential life had organized the 
Government, established its relations to foreign 
powers and made its bulwarks strong. At his death 
it was even said with trutli that he had "deliberate- 
ly dispelled the enchantment of his own great name;" 
with wonderful unselfishness he himself placed the 
helm in other hands, looked on for a time at the 



prosperity which he had taught others to supply, 
and "convinced his country that she depended less 
on him than either her enemies or her friends be- 
lieved." And then he died in the peaceful retirement 
of his home. It was the death of a venerated father 
whose work was done. 

A glance at the sorrows of other years only re- 
veals to us anew the greatness of our present loss. 
It explains the grief which the nation is bearing 
now, the sympathy which flows to-day to America 
from every shore. 

Our beloved Garfield was the acknowledged Pres- 
ident of all the land. Confidence, admiration, good- 
will, a new-born loyalty, were turning towards him 
from those who had been long and deeply estranged 
from our national life. Even those who had once 
known him as an enemy had felt the spell of his 
wonderful history and his great, kind heart. Insen- 
sibly to themselves they had begun to admire his 
courage, to love his gentleness, and to feel a pride 
of possession in his varied and marvelous powers. 
That such a ruler should be lost to them and to 
his country, that a President so just and wise and 
kind should have met so foul a death has pierced 
their hearts with pain. 

And there are none whose grief is not made more 
profound when they think that he died in the midst 



of his magnificent prime. The question is on every 
lip throughout the world : When did any man 
ever ascend to that lofty place more completely fitted 
for its powers, more variously and richly furnished 
for a splendid and beneficent, career ? The pilot had 
been trained for fifty years. A nation called him 
to the helm. The voyage was all before him. But 
before the first watch ended, he lay before us — dead ! 

By those of his countrymen who never knew him 
personally, and who knew comparatively little of his 
personal worth, he is naturally lamented as their great 
civic representative, their nation's head. Many, no 
doubt, in other lands, mourn for the Republic more 
than for the leader she has lost. They love America, 
the land which has led so many nations in the 
path to civil freedom. They mourn for her affliction, 
for the foul blot on her name, and for the reproach 
which fastens on free institutions, when beneath them 
such a crime can be born. 

We share these thoughts of sorrow with all our 
fellow-countrymen and with the world. But O my 
friends ! I am sure that I shall only borrow the 
thought which is in the hearts of you all when I 
say, that it is by none of these things that the 
deepest sorrow of this-- immediate community is 
stirred. You are his neighbors, his life-long ac- 
quaintances, his friends. I can read your hearts, — 



and what I see there I myself knew him well 
enough to share. You mourn, it is true, your 
old political leader ; you mourn the champion of 
your political convictions, the watchful advocate of 
your rights. In common with all the land, you 
mourn your President ; and you feel the added 
shock of that foul and most untimely end. But I 
can see that in the hearts of his friends, and, in 
this community, even in the hearts of his political 
opponents, the deepest sorrow, after all, is at the 
loss of the man. It is the man that was so dear. 
He was the President. — Yes, but in him the man 
was greater than the President. His office was not 
so noble as himself. It is felt that in him the 
words of Jehovah through his prophet were again 
fulfilled: — "I will make a man more precious than 
fine gold ; even a man than the golden wedge of 
Ophir." 

There is no perfection on earth. — Let us not of- 
fend his modest heart by the extravagance of our 
eulogy. — But not many men have stood in the eye 
of the world who have approached more nearly our 
best ideals than he. 

There needs strength to make a man. It was 
impossible not to admire in him the strength and 
fullness of his powers. 

Even his stalwart, sturdy frame, his countenance 



10 

so full of healthful, cheerful life, prepared your 
hearts to trust him. You cannot picture to your- 
selves to-day without a feeling of delighted pride, 
the vigorous youth striding with his axe into the 
midst of the forest, rejoicing in his toil ; or the 
man, at Chicamauga, mounting with iron limbs, after 
the long hours of battle, for that daring ride which 
was to turn disaster into victory. 

And great strength of intellect was his. It was 
exhibited in every field to which his thoughts were 
turned. His student years were filled with academ- 
ic honors; he had possessed himself of all the 
treasures of the classics. His Bible knowledge was 
such as to fit him in the assemblies of religion for 
a teacher's place. He became an instructor, and 
immediately hundreds of students acknowledged the 
stimulus and guidance of his mind. Tn law, al- 
though he gave to that profession but a fraction of 
his strength, yet he won signal triumphs in the 
highest courts. He entered military life ; at once 
his untiring study, his accuracy of judgment com- 
pelled him forward to a leader's place. There were 
crises when his counsels prevailed with men who 
had made a life-long study of the art of war. The 
voice of his fellow-citizens, the desire of the Presi- 
dent, called him from the battle field to the halls of 
Congress, — scarcely thirty years of age. His advance 



11 

was constant ; he became the acknowledged leader 
of the House. Through the profoundest, the most 
intricate problems of finance and government he 
saw and led the way. And, finally, through all 
his course he was able to sustain his convictions, 
and to win acceptance for them even from unwill- 
ing minds by an almost unequaled oratory. 

These were his powers. In strength he was a 
man. 

And these rich, full powers we admired the more 
because they were the results in large measure of 
his own right and steadfast will. His varied strength 
was not the endowment of birth, or the gift of 
genius. It is true, a healthful ancestry gave him 
that gift of his first vigorous life ; but it was his 
own youthful temperance and life-long purity which 
kept unwasted an inheritance which thousands 
have suffered to lapse through indolence or have 
ruined by sin. It was his own years of willing, 
honest toil which built that sound and hardy frame 
which could bear the full broadside of life's assaults 
almost without a scar. And in a still higher sense 
it is true that his mental riches were due to his 
own steadfast will. Every progressive triumph, from 
his college honors to that great hour when, attempt- 
ing to crown another, unconsciously he crowned 
himself as the nation' s choice, was won by resolute 
and untiring work. 



12 

But, my friends, it is not resolution, it is not all 
the strength, that nature can give or resolution can 
acquire which alone can make a man. This is not 
the strength that makes a man. There needs strength 
of cliaracter. 

And character is not found in power: it is found 
in the use of power, in the ends chosen by the soul. 
It is found in the affections ; and here not only 
strength, but beauty is born ; — not in the affections 
as we sometimes use that word, meaning only the 
native impulses and spontaneous play of our emo- 
tions and desires ; but in the affections as controlled 
and guided and purified by the moral nature ; 
taught to flow, like a full, life-giving river within its 
banks, within the bounds of duty and of truth : 
freely flowing, like the river which windeth at its 
own sweet will, but trained to find their will, with 
joy, in Heaven's pure law. 

Powers far surpassing Garfield's the world has 
seen,— rarely, it is true, a group so varied and 
marked by such symmetry, — but powers far surpassing 
his the world has seen displayed, at least in solitary 
and special fields. Yes, it has seen them, and it 
has been filled with horror at their perversion. It 
has seen them used for evil, for the defence of 
wrong, or for the purposes of a selfish ambition. 
It has Been men in the very pride of their powers 



13 

forget the God by whom those powers were be- 
stowed. It has heard the claim that genius could 
not be asked to bow to those moral laws given by 
God to common men. It has known men of rich 
and genial natures, endowed with warm imagination 
and with exuberance of sentiment and emotive life, 
to make the very fire and fullness of their affections 
a reason for leaving them untamed, and for casting 
off the laws of God. Thank God, it was not so 
with him we mourn to-day ! Full of warm and 
genial life, with a temperament ardent, companion- 
able, quick to feel, and casting forth a charm on 
others which amounted to fascination, yet the 
strength of every feeling and every natural affection 
was governed by a strength nobler still. Open as 
he was — like all real men — to every appeal of a 
legitimate ambition, yet there was a force within 
him before which ambition was taught to bow. 
Exuberant, full-charged with every natural feeling 
which can enrich the heart, yet he yielded to no 
extravagance for which we must apologize to-day. 
There was no wildness in his life for which we 
must ask his great services to atone, no wickedness 
which we must drape with softer names, or ask 
you, with backward steps, to cover in silence at 
his grave. A whole nation, a whole world of 
Christian hearts, give thanks to-day for his private 



14 

virtues, — his filial affection, his unbroken troth, his 
parental love. There is a legend, you know, that 
the house where Christ once dwelt, that holy home 
of Nazareth, was lifted by angels and borne to a 
far-off shrine, in the midst of royal Italy. There 
for centuries it has stood, admired and cherished, 
the centre of pious and thankful pilgrimage. My 
friends, it is no legend which awakens to-day our 
thanksgiving. Our hearts rejoice that the pure and 
holy home which that true man and that true 
woman made beneath the village trees, was, with- 
out a thought of theirs, lifted by the angels of God 
and set in the centre of a nation's gaze. Before its 
pure rays the wicked shall be struck with shame. 
The tempted shall look and feel the evil spell dis- 
solve. Innumerable hearts shall be strengthened in 
every virtue and drawn nearer to God by thankful 
pilgrimage to that holy scene. 

The private virtues of this good man to you 
were always known, but now his truth, his purity, 
his holy human loves, his lofty fear of God, and 
humble faith in Him, are read of all the world. 
And never did they shine more brightly before 
your eyes than in those last long weeks of doubt 
and suffering. That may be said of him which was 
said of England's noblest prince— still mourned by 
her widowed Queen. 



15 

" We know him now, 

We see him as he moved, 
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise, 
With what sublime repression of himself, 
And in what limits and how tenderly '. 
Not making his high place the lawless perch 
Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage ground 
For pleasure, but through all this tract of years 
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, 
Before a thousand peering littlenesses, 
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne 
And blackens every blot : for where is he 
Who dares foreshadow for an only son 
A lovelier life, a more unstained than his." 

It was of course impossible but that, amidst the 
excitement of political strife, his integrity should be 
aspersed. Those calumnies were long since scattered 
to the wind ; they are answered indeed without a 
word by the comparative poverty in which he dies. 
A man to whom a thousand golden secrets are 
known, whose mere name would have brought him 
wealth in a single day, bequeaths to his family a 
modest house and one small farm. I listen with 
delight to his fearless offer to open every page of 
his life to the eye of his constituents. He rises at 
Warren, in the days when calumny was rife, meets 
every accusation with calm, good-tempered truth, 
and, at last, pausing before his vast auditory of 
friends and foes, invites them then and there to 
ask him any question whatever, touching any trans- 
action in all his personal, financial affairs, which 
they may desire. He offers, and that without a 
moment's notice, and before the most exacting eyes, 
to account for every dollar then or ever in his 



16 

hands. We read in the history of France, — I bo 
row the suggestion from a gifted writer, — of Mo: 
taigne, the only one of the French nobility wh 
through all the wars of the Fronde, kept his cast 
gates unbarred. "His personal character was a be 
ter defence than a regiment of horse." It was f 
with this honest man. His integrity was his guan 
and night and day his castle gates stood open wid 
And his tongue was as honest as his hand. Shall v< 
ever forget the occasions when we have seen hin 
all alone, face the unbroken surge of popular excit 
ment or of deliberative wrong % Placing himse 
where misapprehension and defeat seemed inevitabL 
you have heard him claim one single hearing befo] 
the headlong vote ; men have stopped and listene 
to his resolute and reasonable words, until, aroun 
this solitary advocate, as on a pivot of steel, tt 
whole assemblage has swung at last to equity an 
righteousness. You have seen him hazard all hi 
political fortune, and risk the trust of life-long friendi 
in defence of men whom he had never seen, fc 
whose defence he never expected, and never r< 
ceived a single dollar to his dying day — mer 
against whom the rage of a whole State we 
aroused, whom a military court had alread 
condemned, whose character was unspeakabl 
odious in his own esteem, but who, he mail 
tained, in opposition to friends and courts an 



17 

constituents, were not condemned in due course of 
law. He won his cause. The position he took in 
his argument was, by the Supreme Court of the 
United States, unanimously sustained, the foregoing 
trial declared unauthorized — the men liberated. The 
supremacy of civil over military law was asserted 
anew. The right of the most unworthy, of the most 
guilty man to be tried by a jury and before a lawful 
tribunal was anew established. Having fought with- 
out fear to save civil liberty from the violence of its 
foes, he now fought with a moral courage sublimer 
still to save it from the recklessness of its friends. 
One scarcely knows which shone brightest, the calm, 
sure wisdom of the lawyer, or the splendid inde- 
pendence of the man. What an answer, my fellow 
citizens, does this incident in President Garlield's 
own history give to those muttered threatenings of 
lawless vengeance on his assassin which we hear, 
and which seem to be tolerated, in some instances, 
even by sober-minded men ! Garfield himself, could 
he speak, would rebuke every threat of this illegal 
violence, even against the infamous wretch whose 
hand struck him down. If such a thing could be, 
he would defend even that reptile with his own price- 
less life. He would plant himself across the thresh- 
old of the assassin's cell. He would face an excited 
soldiery and the maddened populace with that same 



18 

appeal which he employed in behalf of the conspir- 
ators of ^Indiana in 1864:— "Hang them if they 
are guilty; but hang them according to law. If 
you do it otherwise, you commit murder." 

But I recall your thoughts to the moral courage, 
the independence, the conscience, which this episode 
in his history — by many almost forgotten — dis- 
played. It was the same throughout his career. 
He was not without great prudence ; he was no 
stranger to a shrewd and careful policy ; but he 
never sold his conscience for any price of place or 
favor or praise. — 

" He kept his honesty and truth, 

His independent tongue and pen, 
And moved, in manhood as in youth. 

Pride of his fellow-men. 

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong, 

A hate of tyrant and of knave, 
A love of right, a scorn of wrong, 

Of coward and of slave. 

A kind, true heart, a spirit high, 
That could not fear, and would not bow. 

Were written in his manly eye 
And on his manly brow. 

Praise to the man ! a nation stands 

Beside his coffin with wet eyes,— 
Her strong, her beautiful, her good,— 

As when a loved one dies. 

And here, on this his funeral day, 
Men stand his cold earth-couch around. 

With the mute homage that we pay 
To consecrated ground. 

And consecrated ground it is. — 

The last, the hallowed home of one, 
Who lives upon all memories, 

Though with the buried gone." 



19 

This is not the place, it may be thought by some, 
certainly I have not now the time, to speak as fully 
as it deserves, of the immediate cause of the Pres- 
ident's death. But what kind of religion or phi- 
losophy were that which could stand in the pres- 
ence of a mourning universe and not ask for its 
cause? Who should fear to ask for it? Who 
should not fear rather to leave such a reasonable 
question unasked, or to leave it without a reply % 
In this case we have not far to seek. It has been 
already said with perfect truth: "It needs neither 
logic nor the lessons of history to connect the 
bloody deed with its cause. It was not left to 
reformers to discover it. Every civilized nation has 
taken notice of it. A morbid nature, a disappointed, 
impecunious, desperate office-seeker, one of the 
thousands of needy men whom a vicious admin- 
istrative system first invites to the Capital and 
to the siege of every office where places go by 
favor, and then drives them half mad by its cruel 
and inevitable procrastinations and replies." — " It 
was the individual act of an undisciplined vaga- 
bond, driven to homicidal mania by a combination 
of uncontrollable greed of office and despair of 
gain." America will find that this cancer of place- 
hunting must be cut out or it will eat away her 
life. I am reminded of the words attributed to 



20 

President Lincoln but a few days before his death. 
Pointing out to a friend the crowd of office-seekers 
besieging his door, he said: "Now we have mas- 
tered the rebellion ; but there you see something 
which in the course of time may become more 
dangerous to the Republic than the rebellion 
itself." How have his words been verified ! 

This doctrine of the spoils, after causing in- 
numerable evils in the past— after disgracing us 
with official incompetency and corruption, work- 
ing a frightful waste of the public revenues, degrad- 
ing politics, impeding legislation— often thwarting it 
with indescribable impudence and selfishness— has 
at last completed its infamy by the murder of 
the President. And yet it lives, and is believed by 
many to be "an essential agency in our politics, 
which only doctrinaires and enthusiasts would at- 
tempt to overthrow." 

I am aware that, in this case, it is said: the 
assassin was a half-crazed vagrant ; why connect 
his deed with any system pursued by honorable 
and rational men \ I reply : because the present 
system makes the President the target for just 
such vagabonds and fools. We may not be able 
by any human wisdom perfectly to protect our 
rulers. Even against Victoria the assassin's shot 
has more than once been fired ; but we are bound 



i 



21 

to eliminate every occasion of such deadly peril 
which we discover. We certainly should not en- 
dure a system which invited against Garfield's 
precious and beloved life the inevitable rage of 
a horde of worthless and desperate men. Oh 
think of the fine gold of such a manhood ! 
Had the nation no need of that great brain and 
trusted heart ; had we no nobler use for the leader 
God had given — that we must set him to distribute 
bread to a fierce and hungry mob, and then bid 
him open his bosom to the full brunt of their 
disappointment and despair ? 

But I gladly turn away from these distressing 
thoughts. I will borrow again from you, my hearers. 
I will take those thoughts of comfort which, even 
in your affliction, I see rising in your hearts. 

Much as you hoped for from Garfield's life, you 
are already saying : What wonders.have been wrought 
in the providence of God by his death ! All dissen- 
sions cease : all sections of the land are blended in 
a common grief, and united together by these weeks 
of prayer and sorrow with a new and living bond. 
Since the first shot on Sumter our country has not 
been one until to-day. Garfield is dead, but our 
nationality is born anew beside his open grave. It 
is impossible for me to listen to the prayers which 
have risen from every city of the South during his 



22 

dreadful months of suffering, to see the Southern 
capitals and houses draped in black to-day, to 
hear from all those houses the tones of grief and 
sympathy, and not to feel that we are one, — that 
God has chosen the universal love for this good 
man to revive the long dormant feeling of our 
national brotherhood. By the universal admiration 
for his character, by sympathy with his heroic 
sufferings, and the great common sorrow for his 
death, He has sealed that brotherhood with a visible 
seal. Who can read without a thrill of thankful- 
ness the words which have appeared in these last 
days in the journals of the South % Listen to the 
message from Alabama: "In these first hours of 
grief the fact stands out in glorious relief, — we are 
one. This morning, from the depth of their grief- 
stricken hearts, all Americans can thank God that 
there is no North, no South, no East, no West, 
but all are bound together in one common sorrow, 
binding in its vastness. We are one and insepara- 
ble." And from Texas comes the same word : 
"North, South, East and West join in their grief 
over the grave of the dead President — a sure sign 
that the currents of our national life flow as strongly 
as they ever did in the history of the Union." The 
press of New Orleans is heard : it traces to Garfield 
"the new life of the united nation — united not in 



23 

name but in truth." To all our lips there comes a 
response to that prayer which even Charleston utters 
by her public voice: "Those whom this national 
affliction has joined together, let no political differ- 
ences put asunder! " It is a new day indeed when 
Southern men can pen such sentiments as these : 
"To each of us he was our President: to each of 
us he was our hero, and over the tragic spot of 
memory where he shall lie entombed, the magnolias 
of the South and the maples of the North shall 
mingle their shade forever." I do not believe that 
these utterances are merely the over-flowing of a 
sincere but transient emotion : there is too much 
evidence that they come from the depth of the 
heart. — How must the soul of Garfield rejoice to hear 
such words ! 

His power in life was vast, but his suffering and 
his death have crowned him with unexampled 
power. His name is made the vital bond of long 
dissevered States. Nations across the seas and in 
the farthest quarters of the globe, for his sake pour 
out new love upon his native land. The generous 
hearts of England mourn almost as if their own 
ruler had expired. The character of your beloved 
friend becomes in a day the possession of the world. 
How is he lifted up and glorified ! His home-bred 
purity and truth, his open-hearted friendliness — 
reaching forth his hand to high and low alike for 



24 

a brother's grasp— and, above all, his profound re- 
ligious faith, have become an example for mankind. 
Often were you instructed and inspired by his 
words, but now the sound maxims of his political 
career, the ample teachings of his political wisdom — 
that copious stream flowing full for successive years, 
the recorded convictions, the devout breathings 
of his spiritual life, have gone out into all the earth: 
they have become the heritage of mankind. 

" His words are driven, 
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown. 
Wher'er beneath the sky of heaven 
The birds of fame have flown." 

Every principle which he defended is endowed 
with new life by his death ; every purpose which 
he cherished will be clothed with new sacredness 
by the memory of his patient sufferings, his un- 
timely end. 

We prayed that he might live. We say he 
died: we shall bury his dust. But his name, his 
character has risen, like the morning sun, with 
redoubled brightness on the land. It is a light 
which shall shine brighter and brighter to the 
perfect day. 

"Take heart! The Waster builds again,— 

\ charmed life such goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish,— but the grain 
Is not for death. 

God works in all things; all obey 

His Aral propulsion from the night : 
Wake thou ami watch !— the World is gray 
With morning light ! 



